Sometimes When You Can't Seem to Put it Into Coherent Sentences, It's Best to Just Let it All Hang Out.

I'm not sad but I am.

There's a voice inside me that keeps saying "This may be your last summer on your own, so enjoy it while you can. No one else to think about but you. Cherish it" but there's also the feeling I get when I think about the things I could be doing right now. "Could" being the operative word (in my mind) because, for example, you don't camp alone. And I don't know anyone else I could camp with. The be-babied friends, the happily married friends, the non-campers but great people friends. I don't know anyone else. You camp with your family. Your single girlfriends. Your boyfriend. Your husband.

Cue the quiet voice... "Why not by yourself? Why. Not?"

But I haven't.

Camped, that is.

I have, by myself, gone for walks, sat and watched street entertainers, gone to Luminara, read five books in two weeks.

I have moments of absolute delight at my single-ness, my ME time. Moments of laugh-out-loud at a tv show and hugging myself because my company is the easiest I've ever known.

But honesty propels me to say that there have also been moments of keen missing, of feeling left out. Of sitting at home listening to fireworks because I didn't have anyone to go with. I didn't have a partner to go with.

Moments of walking through a public gathering and seeing the couples, the young families, the hand holding, the what-I-don't-have-ness and hurting.

Moments of wondering how I will ever come to meet someone when my life is limited to my work space and my coming home to get ready for the next work day space and my one, two, three communities that I put my time into. Where do I have to go? Who do I have to become? No, what part of me do I have to let out, to satiate in order to be around people, the person. Him.

Whoever he is.

And there's occasional moments of panic. Along the lines of "What if I buy a new car and drive it off the lot and scratch it?" I have moments of "If I do meet someone, I have to get to know him. I have to date. And what if I think he's something he's not. Like has happened before. In the past. Historically?"

Bird was a year ago. Exactly a year ago was Bird.

I believe I'd handle it differently now. I feel stronger.

I've been quiet about certain things since Bird. Quiet about crushes and romantic hopes and dreams. Quieter than I should have been maybe, but I felt the need to be guarded. I'm less comfortable when the lines between my life and this blog get blurry and I'm always, always aware of what my Buddy (hi Buddy!) said to me when I first started this blog forever ago that I should write knowing that it may be read by the very person I'm writing about; that there is no anonymity on the internet. So I try to write as if they're reading along. Whoever they are. And I try to write imagining how they'd feel if they came across themselves, written about, without permission on the internet.

I try to imagine how I'd feel if it happened to me.

But after a time of silence, it feels wrong, it feels like I'm leaving out part of my story. Which I am. Which I'm allowed to do.

But ultimately, this is *my* story, and I only ever wrote it down for me.

Whoever it is I'm becoming.

Whether or not this is my last summer being single, I still wish I had a best friend who was all mine.

I guess, for now, that's me.